Donatus of Arezzo

The Holy Hierarch Donatus of Arezzo is the patron of the city of Arezzo, in Italy, held to be its bishop. He was a confessor of the faith, and according to tradition was killed in 362, in the time of Julian the Apostate. His feast is on 7 August.

The source

A Passio of Donatus was written by a bishop of Arezzo, Severinus, and is of questionable historicity. Severinus calls him a martyr, though ancient sources describe him as a bishop and confessor of the faith rather than a martyr. An early life of him was already known to Saint Gregory the Great. According to tradition he was a native of Nicomedia.

Childhood and training

According to Severinus's account, as a child Donatus came to Rome with his family from Nicomedia. He was orphaned, during a persecution, and given the name "donated" (Donatus) by the bishop of Arezzo. He was brought up by a Christian priest, Pymenius; his friend and companion in his studies was a boy named Julian, who would later become the emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian rose to be subdeacon, while Donatus became a lector. Saint Peter Damian would later write in his Sermons that "in the field of the Lord two sprigs, Donatus and Julian, grow together, but one will become a cedar of Paradise, the other coal for the eternal flames of Hell."

On 4 February 362 Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion; it proclaimed that all religions were equal before the law and that the Roman Empire had to return to its original religious eclecticism. Christian chroniclers considered that its purpose was the restoration of paganism at the expense of Christianity. Tradition says that Julian also persecuted individual Christians, and that Donatus's parents and his teacher Pymenius died in these persecutions. Donatus escaped to Arezzo and worked with a monk named Hilarinus, preaching the Christian faith, performing penances and miracles.

Miracles

Severinus's Passio says that Donatus brought back to life a woman named Euphrosina; fought and slew a dragon that had poisoned the local well; gave sight to a blind woman named Syriana; and drove out a demon that was tormenting Asterius, son of the Roman prefect of Arezzo. He was ordained deacon and priest by Saint Satyrus, bishop of Arezzo, and continued to preach in the city and the surrounding region. At the death of Satyrus, Pope Julius I appointed him bishop. A man named Anthimus was his deacon.

During a service, at the moment of giving Communion, when a glass chalice was being used, some pagans entered the church and shattered the chalice. Donatus, after intense prayer, collected all the fragments and joined them together. A piece was missing from the bottom of the cup, yet miraculously nothing spilled. Astounded, seventy-⁠nine pagans converted to Christianity. A similar story is told of Saint Nonnosus, but the object is a glass lamp.

Martyrdom

A month after this, the prefect of Arezzo, Quadratian, arrested Hilarinus the monk and Donatus. Hilarinus was martyred on 16 July 362 and Donatus was beheaded on 7 August, at Arezzo, in the time of Julian the Apostate.

Relics and veneration

He is buried in Arezzo. In 1125 some of his relics (and those of the dragon said to have been killed by him) were brought to the church of Santa Maria e San Donato on the island of Murano, near Venice. A large silver reliquary bust of Donatus of the thirteenth century is now in the National Museum at Naples. He is patron of epileptics and bakers, of Arezzo and of several Italian towns, among them Guardiagrele, whose patrons are Donatus and Saint Emidius: annually between 6 and 8 August a festival is held for them, during which the effigy of Donatus is paraded around the streets; it is traditional to eat porchetta, oven- or spit-⁠roasted suckling pig flavoured with pepper, rosemary, garlic and other seasonings.